Barrett Stover

This is the second part of the Increasing Athleticism series Brian Dempsey and I are double teaming. Part 1 can be found HERE. 

When looking deeper into the reasons why it is important to train in all three planes of motion, you have to consider fasciae. Simply put for our purposes, fasciae is the connective tissue that surrounds the muscles and links the kinetic chain together. A good visual that is used to describe fasciae is the skin around link sausage.

There are numerous fascial meridians which connect specific areas of the body to each other. This is basically the body’s system of “highways and interstates” that connect everything efficiently. Because of how these fascial meridians are connected, there are certain movement patterns that assist other movement patterns (kinetic chains). Tom Myers proposes to look at the body not as 650 muscles, but one muscle with 650 fascial pockets. This is why integration is so key when looking at movement and training athletes.

Superficial Back Line illustrates how the fasciae connects the body. Photo Source: Anatomy Trains

Fasciae has an elasticity property that is similar to a rubber band – the more you stretch it, the more energy it stores up. Therefore when fasciae is loaded, it assists the muscle with the task at hand. Because of the stretch resulting from a functional, full chain movement, an athlete will now maximize his/her power, strength, and explosiveness.

Manipulating Exercises and Exercise Selection for Integration

All training exercises should be executed in all three planes of motion and should be integrated together when possible. Isolation lifts have their place, and are effective in adding strength. However, this should not be the primary focus of an entire program. Rather, the isolation lifts should be supplemented in as remedial exercises as specific weaknesses are identified in the individual. It is very beneficial, especially to an athlete who is inexperienced in the weight room, to include more fully body movements in their program.

One general rule of thumb to use here is general to specific and/or isolated to integrated throughout the workout so the athlete works on his weaknesses separately then learns how to put it all together.

An example of exercise selection that demonstrates this idea is a landmine push press instead of bench press.

With this exercise, the athlete is standing as opposed to laying on their back. This will allow for the athlete to generate power from the ground and up the kinetic chain, through the chest and into the arm. By utilizing the different variations, you can focus on different parts of the chain. The bilateral stance (feet side-by-side) is more strenuous on the chest/shoulder but also is a good anti-rotation exercise for the core. Adding a squat would obviously provide more of a full body explosive exercise. Staggering the feet takes away the anti-rotation challenge, but can allow you to add a small twist to work on explosiveness through rotation (think shot put throw). Med ball throws would also fall into this same category.

Another great example of an integrated exercise is Spidermans. Spidermans require great ranges of mobility and total body strength/stabilization. This is a great example of an exercise where stability, strength, and mobility work together through all three planes of motion. (Video below)

In the Strength for Athleticism video below, Chuck Wolf pointed out that when a person has a lack of stability in an area, the body splints down on that spot to stabilize it resulting in a lack of mobility of the compensated area. If we are able to strengthen and stabilize the compensated area, the body will open back up and regain its proper range of motion (5:30-7:40 in video).

For Part 3, we will begin to examine program design and how to apply the ideas we have discussed.